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Japan approves first human-animal embryo experiments
- buboard 7y agoGood for mice i guess. Bad for rats.
- arcticbull 7y agoExcellent analysis.
- buboard 7y agoIn my defense, it's not really my area.
- not_a_cop75 7y agoFinally, Japan can make good on the real life creations from their anime movies.
- flyingfences 7y agoEd...ward...
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- htor 7y agogrow human organs inside rats and? how does that work? i don't understand. meanwhile we are entering the sixt mass extinction event caused by a massive climate change. what good is this technology when you have failing crops, extreme weather, no electricity and mass immigration at your doorstep?
- dekhn 7y agoit's fairly complicated but basically that's the magic of induced pluripotent stem cells. It's possible to turn human cells into cells that are prepared to become a specific organ, and then place them in an environment in which they will grow to that organ. This is because most of the necessary commands to differentiate and multiply cells into an organ are encoded in the genome and cellular state. I think the wikipedia page helps understand this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_pluripotent_stem_cell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_pluripotent_stem_cell although the part where you can actually make a rat/human hybrid is still undefined science.
- La-ang 7y ago[This is because most of the necessary commands to differentiate and multiply cells into an organ are encoded in the genome and cellular state.]
- algorias 7y agoPresumably, the eventual goal is to grow full-sized organs inside some larger animal. Then the organ can be harvested and transplanted to a human who needs it. Per my understanding, medicine does a lot of work with rats because they're cheap and easy to work with, so any new technology of this type would be tried on rats first. By the way, my neutral explanation above doesn't mean that I approve of doing such things. Honestly, I'm quite torn about the issue.
- noir_lord 7y agoI'm not remotely torn about it, taken to the finish, it's a human organ with my dna grown in a pig and then transplanted into me. We already eat bacon and use large mammal heart valves in surgery. I mean we wear the skin of cows, grease things with their rendered fat and use them for glue. This seems like a strange point to be torn on.
- mrfusion 7y agoRemember that a bio ethicist has years of education on smart ways to block stuff like this. If they didn’t block this stuff they wouldn’t have a job.
- rc_kas 7y agoYeah America has all the moral debates about genetics and experiments with embryos. But the bottom line is other countries are going to move forward no matter what America does.
- kldaace 7y ago>Assuming the Japanese don't have debates on bioethics. Nice.
- gridlockd 7y agoHe didn't assume that. Also, you're making the internet a worse place by accusing him of doing that. You should feel bad.
- nothrabannosir 7y ago“Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.”
- thebooktocome 7y agoIt's a logical consequence of the statement that America has all the ethical debates on genetics.
- hombre_fatal 7y agoPretty sure they meant "all these debates." Doubt they think USA has the only debates in the world. As in, "you're having all these debates about how to defend your front door but you don't even have a lock on your back door."
- dang 7y agoPlease don't respond to a bad comment by breaking the site guidelines yourself. That only makes this place worse still. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
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- La-ang 7y ago[In 2017, Nakauchi and his colleagues reported the injection of mouse iPS cells into the embryo of a rat that was unable to produce a pancreas. The rat formed a pancreas made entirely of mouse cells. Nakauchi and his team transplanted that pancreas back into a mouse that had been engineered to have diabetes, The rat-produced organ was able to control blood sugar levels, effectively curing the mouse of diabetes1.] WOW :O
- roywiggins 7y agoA good day for diabetic mice!
- streb-lo 7y agoI mean, they are engineered to have diabetes, I don't know if they have much cause to celebrate.
- ChuckMcM 7y agoWas it the hitch hikers guide that said, "As a result of their time on Earth, mouse scientists had developed the means to cure all mouse diseases, allowing their civilization to survive in perpetuity."
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- gridlockd 7y agoYes, it's pretty crazy how well this already works. A toast to the manpig that shall grow my future replacement liver!
- thebeefytaco 7y agoWe must all stop manbearpig.
- dang 7y agoNot here, please.
- ETHisso2017 7y agoI worry about allowing Japan, a country that has refused to fully own up to the biomedical atrocities it committed with Unit 731, to lead the way on these kinds of experiments. I would feel much more comfortable if there was international ethical oversight.
- madez 7y ago> I worry about allowing Japan It's not up to you.
- sdinsn 7y agoI'm not sure why you got downvoted and flagged. You are absolutely right; what Japan wants to do in their own country is their own decision.
- madez 7y agoThe votes also fluctuated a bit before settling. It's unclear to me why it got flagged. To me, my comment is an obvious and factual correction. Maybe it was flagged because I corrected someone tersely who has been downvoted a lot already. But then, other short corrections in these situations don't get flagged. Maybe there is a special sensitivity towards the topic of US-American exceptionalism and neo-imperialism. Who can flag? Only Dang?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- lewaldman 7y agoWhy all comments are being down-voted? (Personally... I think this tech is amazing and I can't wait for it to be available worldwide!)
- enraged_camel 7y agoMods need to look into this trend and give us a report.
- CorruptedArc 7y agoI've noticed that too. It seems like it is happening quiet a bit lately. Comments getting voted down out of no where for seemingly no reason.
- La-ang 7y agoMust be the millennials finding a new reason to get offended LOL
- alexandercrohde 7y agoYou mean the South Park references that add no contribution to this scientific article? Or people broadcasting their moral opinions into the void? I don't see any good comments downvoted.
- theincredulousk 7y agoYeah for example the super-profound and constructive top comment that just quotes the article and adds "WOW :O". That's quality content, unlike a the South Park reference drawing a simile between serious research and the (humorously) exaggerated potential disasters of combining human DNA with other species. Obviously the second was made by some common peasant lacking the intelligence to engage with the audience here. The first, clearly being the work of an intellectual powerhouse the likes of which we stand in awe of, has rightly collected the praise and votes they deserve.
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- CNJ7654 7y agoHey uh, Doc? are these cat tissue samples?
- fjcp 7y agoWhen I heard Alex Jones on Joe Rogan saying that there was human-animal experiments being made I thought he was exaggerating. In my opinion this kind of research crosses some ethical lines that shouldn't be crossed. If one considers an embryo as an independent life, what species the embryo belongs to? Wouldn't be the ones in this experiment half humans with human rights? After all, the scientist doesn't know all, and the cells he put in could evolve to a chain reaction of the hybrid developing human conscious. Just my opinion tho, as I know nothing about genetics and biology.
- Bayart 7y agoWell, if you're allowing abortion on the basis that an embryo isn't human life, you're by extension allowing this.
- fjcp 7y agoRight, that's what I am saying. If even that discussion isn't settled yet, we should be more careful and wait before mixing humans and animals.
- giantsloth 7y agoThat discussion is settled. The lie that it isn’t, is continued to oppress and make public the female body to continue her unpaid labor in both reproducing the work force and her unpaid labor in managing her family for the benefit of the corporation.
- oneshot908 7y agoThat discussion was reasonably settled a very long time ago and court cases established reasonable laws around it. Then one side demanded a do-over, in much the same way they are seeking do-overs for a lot of previously seemingly settled issues.
- svieira 7y agoThere is a lot of settled law in the history of the USA that shouldn't stand (segregation, suffrage, slavery, extreme methods of execution) no matter how reasonable the various settlements seemed to some at the time of their "settlement". When an issue will not be settled no matter how reasonable the first party is the second party is either motivated by tyranny or just principles. The former requires force to suppress. The latter cannot be suppressed forever without destroying the goods the first party wishes to preserve.
- viach 7y agoI understand (and agree with) all these moral related questions and why so many downvotes in this topic. What is interesting, when one nation develops this tech and their people will live, say, 150 years, will these morals survive in other countries?
- pgt 7y agoLike iPhone manufacturing, the West will buy the finished product before it allows the experimentation under its roof.
- viach 7y agoMight be. But it is quite different from iPhone manufacturing. It actually could more dangerous than nukes. West will just buy this you say, but why it is not possible now to just buy several intercontinental ballistic missiles? There are people with enough money and desire to buy this.
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- umvi 7y ago> but why it is not possible now to just buy several intercontinental ballistic missiles? It probably is. You'll have to buy them from North Korea in secret though.
- theincredulousk 7y agoman-bear-pig origin story confirmed
- wukerplank 7y agoThis will be for the 1% not the people. Should it become more widely used: With our overcrowded planet, people successfully refusing to die will open new can of worms.
- carapace 7y agoIt beats organlegging (which is a real thing now) but we should be able to regrow our own organs and limbs. Becker, "The Body Electric" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Body_Electric_(book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Body_Electric_(book) But then he died and most research dried up, but now there's Levin: https://ase.tufts.edu/biology/labs/levin/ https://ase.tufts.edu/biology/labs/levin/
- asciimo 7y agoI hoped technology would reduce animal exploitation. It does in some areas, like cell farming to create food without animals. And synthetic models for pharmaceutical research. Maybe this branch of research can evolve to eliminate animals as well.
- ganzuul 7y agoThere will still exist a fascinating dichotomy, up until we can predict result without either simulation or animal models. An ideal engineered organism would be a delightfully weird homunculus, and a sufficiently advanced simulation could be deemed to be a living creature too. Perhaps it is best to make sure that lab technicians feel a great deal of empathy for the animals they work with.
- asciimo 7y agoHave to be careful, though. Too much empathy and you'll quit your job.
- ganzuul 7y agoI would hope instead that they refuse to do certain procedures. Then if someone else gets asked to do the same procedure in hope of less empathy there should be alarms going off. The lab technicians will after all be the experts on the subject; not academics on an ethics board.
- CodeCube 7y agoLooks like we're moving in that direction for some things with organ on a chip systems: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ-on-a-chip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ-on-a-chip
- alexashka 7y agoTechnology may eventually help reduce humans who don't mind exploitation. Beyond that, I'm afraid it'll be business as usual.
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- notadoc 7y agoIsn't it highly likely this is already being done by various other nations already in secret labs?
- sebringj 7y agoHow does the human part affect cognition? A stem cell for example is before it "decides" to be a specific cell right? If that is the case in terms of embryo development, then how do they coax only specific cells in embryos to only express themselves in parts of the body excluding the brain. Complicated but I really am not understanding some basic principles here.
- HeadsUpHigh 7y agoYes you are missing basic parts. There are certain genes that produce proteins that then bind to other control areas of the DNA that affect how much other genes are expressed. These last genes translate to proteins that make e.g. a pancreatic cell what it is. But this is a tree of increased specialization on which embryonic stem cells become e.g. blood stem cells which then specialize to rbc, white platelet producers.
- puskavi 7y agoAs usual, Japan is ahead of things. Maybe in not-so-distant future we'll see human DNA modification. It's the only way towards, as devolution will dull us otherwise with all these bad, useless habits too available.
- uhtred 7y agoPoor rats. Poor mice.
- tasubotadas 7y agoThe first thing that came to my mind was "Edward...".
- christ-almighty 7y agoFucking Alex Jones was right. He’s starting to look like the Richard Stallman of Transhumanism.
- valinsky 7y agoAlex Jones Heavy Breathing
- souldamnation 7y agoThese damn ethics committees are just slowing down much needed progress. Let's not pretend that DARPA and other black military scientific experimentation sites around the world have, and are, operating under the ethical radar and keeping their findings classified and to themselves and highly doubtful to the betterment of mankind. Let's just call a spade a spade and loosen the restrictions on the scientific community that actually operates with the public good in mind.
- Robelius 7y agoLet's move fast and break things, including our ethics. Counties have done unethical experiments on humans before, and maybe they do it now. Why should we hold ourselves to a standard, if other groups do not? I couldn't possibly think of a reason why the scientific community would hold themselves accountable, rather than think they know best and act as if they were superior to the larger community they work to improve. I mean, that mindset has never gone wrong. Personally, I like seeing a community doing some attempt at self regulation. Maybe it's not perfect, but it's better than nothing.
- CamperBob2 7y agoLet's move fast and break things, including our ethics. Why not? That's how we got vaccines, isn't it? (Stated completely without any ironic intent.)
- arpa 7y agoIt's all fun and research until someone loses an eye though.
- JohnClark1337 7y agoThe next step is to make cat girls.